search

Each Monday evening, for the last 12 months or a so, a small group has come together to pray.

They were praying for the provision of a centre which could provide a strategic base for gospel witness amongst young people in Yorkshire and beyond. On 24 February God answered their prayers in a remarkable way. To understand the story we have to roll back around three years.

‘We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.’

So said Winston Churchill defending the adversarial nature of the House of Commons debating chamber. The same could be said of our church buildings. They are monuments to the era in which they were built and reflect its values.

Concerns have been raised regarding the NHS (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015 which will come into force on 6 April and as to how these will affect missionaries who require hospital treatment.

The Government has taken the view that, since the UK has a residency-based health-care system, free NHS hospital treatment should only be provided to visitors in rare cases, for example when they are working for the UK Government (including on humanitarian projects) or when an international obligation requires it.

Sixty years after Billy Graham held the 1954 Greater London Crusade in the old Harringay Arena, another gospel mission in Harringay took place in mid-October with an amazing conversion story with a link to that original event.

A lady who went to hear Billy Graham preach the gospel in the Harringay Arena in 1954 left that event without committing her life to Christ but 60 years later she came to the ‘Hope For Harringay’ mission and received Jesus as her Saviour! Like the others who came to the Saviour of the world during the mission, she shone with the joy of her salvation.

After their church building was compulsory purchased, one might think that the church family, moving into a new building, might just take a few years to settle.

But this has not been the case at Enfield Evangelical Free Church (EEFC) in the north of London.

‘Afflicting the comfortable’ could be taken as the keynote of this year’s Carey Conference held at the Hayes, Swanick, 6-8 January.

The main speaker was Professor Greg Beale of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He is the author of a landmark and voluminous commentary on the Greek text of the book of Revelation and he treated the participants to a magisterial introduction to John’s apocalypse. The book is meant to be understood symbolically, according to its opening verse. The dramatic word pictures of the apostle will sedate the nominal Christian but shock God’s true people into action. There are seven churches addressed in the opening chapters of which only two are faithful. The others must change or be judged with the world. Hence John’s writing is addressed first to the whole professed church, but only the faithful remnant will ultimately benefit.

A new church is being planted on the South Bank of the Thames in London during 2015, and just in case you were wondering about the reasoning behind this, the FIEC have put together a very valuable Q&A about the real need for another Bible-centred church in the metropolis that is the UK capital city.

Q: Aren’t there already lots of gospel churches in London?

There was a glossy feel to the annual meetings of the Grace Baptist Mission on Saturday 27 October.

First of all, the venue, the Friends Meeting House in Euston, London had been refurbished – new seats, new stage, flashy data projector equipment and perhaps best of all new loos!

The first week of November saw over 460 delegates meeting on the Norfolk coast for what is fast-becoming a key gathering for gospel-focused leaders in the free churches. It was this year’s FIEC Leaders’ Conference. Julian Hardyman (Eden Baptist, Cambridge) described it as ‘unmissable’ and ‘one of the highlights of my year’!

By any standards it was an outstanding time with spiritually nourishing, expository preaching, excellent seminars, encouraging reports of developments within the FIEC family of churches, well-led corporate worship and many informal opportunities to encourage one another in ministry. In the final session, John Stevens (FIEC national director) said simply: ‘I think we met the Lord Jesus together’. It would be hard to find a better or truer description of the week.

‘Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them’ (Psalm 111:2), were the words with which Martin Leech, director of the European Missionary Fellowship (EMF) opened one of the sessions at the mission’s October Autumn Conference.

EMF missionaries came from Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania, Spain and the UK to stay at Guessens, Hertfordshire – the Mission’s HQ – for a long weekend of Bible ministry, reports, prayer, discussion and fellowship. Public meetings were held at Guessens on the Friday evening at which Matt Hill, the new director of Spanish Christian publishing house Editorial Peregrino and István Salánki from London’s Hungarian Reformed Church spoke of their ministries.

A service of thanksgiving for the new building of Lower Ford Street Baptist Church (LFSBC) in Coventry was held on 11 October.

The official opening had already taken place on 14 September when the Lord Mayor of Coventry, the local MP, and those involved in the construction attended. The previous building, strategically located on the edge of the city centre near to Coventry University and opened in 1857, was no longer fit for purpose. Rebuilding started in 2013. Hillfields Evangelical Baptist Church and Durbar Avenue Evangelical Church kindly shared their services/buildings while LFSBC were ‘homeless’.

On 5 October around 300 people gathered to celebrate and witness the commissioning service for City Church Manchester.

Started in September with support from churches in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester itself, this young church (already numbering about 80 people) met to hear preaching from Richard Cunningham (UCCF), prayers from supporting friends, and covenant challenges to themselves and their pastors, Ralph Cunnington and Matt Waldock. They meet in Central Hall on Oldham Street, in the heart of the city and are part of the growing family of FIEC new church plants.

On 22 November, a second ‘Certain Sounds Seminar’ was held at Starbeck Mission in Harrogate.

Last year the subject was ‘Basic Public Speaking’ and this year ‘The Fundamentals of Preaching’. Twenty five speakers/preachers or potential speakers/preachers gathered to hear Ron Collard and John Mollitt give papers on the supremacy of preaching in a multi-media society; motivation and inspiration; preparation of self; preparation of material; proclamation and examination.

A team of 12 members of Champion Forest Baptist Church, Houston arrived at St John, Newland in Hull for a seven-day mission in November, with local church members led by US super lawyer, Mark Lanier.

Mark is one of the top ten trial lawyers in America and teaches an adult class of around 800 at his home church in Houston (biblical-literacy.org). He has recently published a book, Christianity on Trial (IVP) which has already sold 15,000 copies in the States.

London City Mission (LCM) held its annual Thanksgiving Service on September 17 with guest speaker Andy Paterson, Mission Director with FIEC, inspiring and motivating LCM staff and supporters alike as he called on them not to lose their nerve or to give up on sharing the gospel verbally.

He also challenged LCM to: ‘Help plant and support indigenous gospel-hearted churches with some of the brilliant evangelists that you have. You need to work with those churches so that they effectively welcome and grow people who are coming to faith in Christ. Please use your expertise to develop a generation of working-class church leaders’. Thirdly, he impressed upon the LCM the role it has to play in helping to train and equip churches in London to cross cultural boundaries and create truly multiracial, multi-ethnic churches in London.

On October 1, the Reform Council expressed its dismay that the objectives of the ‘Shared Conversations on Scripture, Sexuality and Mission’ had been changed. As a result orthodox Anglicans had been, in effect, excluded.

It has called on its members not to participate under these conditions.

‘He made the stars to shine, He made the rolling sea, He made the mountains high and He made me’ has been sung this summer by thousands of children who have never heard about the death and resurrection of Jesus and whose families never attend a church.

United Beach Missions teams have been sharing the good news of Jesus for a total of 60 weeks at beach resorts in England, Wales, Ireland, as well as in Spain and Portugal. With members as young as 15 but with some in their sixties and older, they have been motivated by a love for the Lord, a love for each other and a love for the lost.

Isaac, James and Peace (left to right) are all graduates of the African Bible University (ABU) in Kampala, Uganda.

James’s father was the village witchdoctor and James was raised to follow in his footsteps. Miraculously, he was called out of darkness and into the light of the gospel. The Lord opened the way for him to study at ABU. James now works as an evangelist amongst young people in villages across Uganda, a nation where three quarters of the population are under 25.